


The End of the Herrengrassee

by Yoonaya



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:12:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yoonaya/pseuds/Yoonaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joonmyun wants to visit Vienna. Jongdae might not be able to take him there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of the Herrengrassee

 

 

*

 

_Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace._

_The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more_

_than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl’s careless hand._

_Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover._

_The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,_

_situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse._

 

**Return to Vienna** , Ludwig von Beethoven

 

*

 

Joonmyun wants to visit Vienna. This is what he tells Jongdae one Sunday afternoon when the both of them are occupied with quite exactly nothing. He wants to drink coffee in one of the Kaffeehausen and feed Jongdae Sachertorte, to wander around the Schönbrunn Palace and marvel at the works of Klimmt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The younger man gives the other a non-impressed sound.

 

‘’It’s too expensive,’’ he decides as he flips the page of his comic book, ‘’the flight alone goes above our budget.’’

 

The black-haired man pouts at his laptop screen, where a picture of the tall towers of the Stephansdom blinks back at him.

 

‘’But I wanna go.’’ He whines.

 

‘’And I want to have a threesome with Masaki Koh but we don’t get everything we want in this world, do we?’’ Jongdae offers. Joonmyun offers him a pillow to his head. Or two.

 

*

 

Joonmyun’s membership at the fitness club starts paying off after just one month. He’s certainly lost all of that Christmas-weight, he notes to Jongdae, who comes over to stand behind the older man with his arms curled around Joonmyun’s now very slight belly. He pats the tight muscles underneath pale skin.

 

‘’I liked your chubby belly.’’ He admits. Joonmyun slaps his hands away, but it’s with a smile. Though Jongdae’s comments do nothing for his confidence, they never fail to brighten his mood. He wriggles out of the other man’s grasp and lets his shirt once more hide his stomach.

 

‘’But I didn’t.’’ He says pointedly. Jongdae chuckles at the other’s familiar stubbornness. He would have had Joonmyun at any weight, but it was nice to see the other man regain some of his lost confidence. He seemed happier these days, Joonmyun. His manner was more open and his speech more vibrant. When Jongdae first met Joonmyun in the cafeteria of the Physics department, the other had not dared to even look him in the eye. Joonmyun appeared now to be able to move through this world with more grace than before, with confidence of saying the right thing and meeting good people, no longer afraid to be stepped on in conversation.

 

Above the waistband of his black slacks Star Wars boxers peek out. As Joonmyun moves away from the bed, Jongdae pulls on them, pulls Joonmyun back into bed. Jongdae makes sure to kiss Joonmyun’s belly button some more and takes pleasure in the way the other does not cover his body for once.

 

*

 

Joonmyun’s two-week holiday ends. Work tires him out and it’s not long before black circles begin to appear underneath his eyes. Jongdae, who makes long shifts at university, never has enough time to comfort the other when he stammers into their apartment at two in the morning, back from another company drink, smelling of alcohol and cheap perfume.

 

‘’They had these girls,’’ Joonmyun explains as Jongdae loosens his tie, ‘’they wanted to set me up with one of them.’’

 

A hiccup. Jongdae just catches the older man as he loses his feet, preventing him from tumbling over. Joonmyun shoots a sorry look at him.

 

‘’I think she felt very uncomfortable. I apologized, y’know, but she wouldn’t have it.’’ He explains to Jongdae.

 

Jongdae shakes his curly mop of hair and tells Joonmyun it wasn’t his fault. When he finally gets the white shirt off of him, the other man’s waist seems to have shrunk enormously. The daintiness of Joonmyun’s wrists, too, takes Jongdae by surprise.

 

‘’You go easy on the diet, yeah? What am I going to do if you disappear?’’ He jokes, curling his fingers around Joonmyun’s wrist and then showing the other the small circle it makes. Joonmyun’s giggle is cut off by another hiccup.

 

‘’I should be the one saying that – you’ve always been thinner than me.’’

 

‘’All part of my conspiracy. I’m going to be so thin that I become invisible.’’

 

‘’And then you’re going to spy on all the hot guys at the bathhouse?’’

 

‘’You know I would never. Me, a guy so fresh, so pure?’’

 

Joonmyun tries to give Jongdae a push on his shoulder, misses, and lets himself fall down onto the soft duvet. Jongdae’s feels his eyelids become heavy as he watches the other curl his body into the sheets, his chest languidly moving up and down as he falls into the comfort of slumber. A warm feeling blooms in Jongdae’s chest; one he clings onto until all his thoughts fade away and sleep overtakes him.

 

*

 

Joonmyun gets thinner than Jongdae. Which is odd because Jongdae is surviving on cup noodles and midnight snacks between Electromagnetism and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, and Joonmyun has been downing protein shakes and chicken breast as if he were to enter a body-building contest next Saturday.

 

‘’Don’t you think you should go and see a doctor? Maybe you have, like, that worm that eats all your food.’’ Jongdae worries to Joonmyun who’s still staring dumbfounded at the numbers of their bathroom scale. He walks out of their bedroom with his backpack slung across his shoulder and sneaks a peak at the scale to check that yes, Joonmyun really weighs less than him now. Jongdae trails a hand down Joonmyun’s neck, feeling the very slight protrusion along his spine. The other shivers visibly.

 

‘’No... I think I’m just going to lay off the cardio for a while. Maybe just do some walking.’’ He shrugs.

 

‘’Let me step on it for a while. Maybe it’s broken.’’ Jongdae muses, pushing Joonmyun off the glass plate lying on their bathroom tiles. Yet when Jongdae steps on it, a familiar number pops up. It’s not broken. He shoots a concerned look at Joonmyun and gets an unworried smile in return. Jongdae notes that the light doesn’t really seem to reach Joonmyun’s eyes. He looks more tired than ever – the lankiness of his body doesn’t help.

 

Joonmyun’s fingers are warm as they tilts up Jongdae’s chin, his lips a little chapped as he presses them against Jongdae’s own. Leaning into the embrace, Jongdae lets his arms wrap around Joonmyun’s tiny waist, feels the softness of his skin underneath the palms of his hands. They move together; slow and unhurried, as if Jongdae doesn’t have a train to catch. Joonmyun is warm and lovely and outside white snow is blazing through the sky.

 

Jongdae moans into the kiss. He wishes he could stay.

 

‘’You’d better dominate that exam.’’ Joonmyun tells him, breaking their embrace. His woolen scarf is pulled a little tighter by elegant hands.

 

‘’Like I dominate you?’’

 

‘’You had better do more than that – unless you want to fail.’’

 

‘’Cheeky.’’

 

‘’You started it.’’

 

‘’Mmm,’’ Jongdae hums, ‘’we’re so disgusting.’’

 

Joonmyun laughs. Another kiss pressed to his nose. At this point Jongdae is starting to feel a bit like a child being sent off for his first day of school. Yet, the smile underneath his red-and-yellow scarf (Joonmyun likes Harry Potter) does not fade.

 

*

 

Joonmyun starts to cough up blood. Jongdae does not realize at first, because Joonmyun has always been good at hiding. It’s winter, and so it’s no surprise the older man gets stuck with a cold. Joonmyun has always had a frail constitution. And so, like any winter, Jongdae buys the other coughing drops and tissues and heating packs and wraps him up in twenty scarves before he lets him leave the house. Unlike other winters though, Jongdae’s warm chicken soup every night does not seem to help Joonmyun recover. His dark circles only get worse through nights not sleeping, and when he coughs Jongdae is afraid he’ll break a lung with all the violence it takes.

 

Another suggestion to go see the doctor denied, Jongdae finds Joonmyun one night hanging over the toilet seat, his thin hands clamping onto the white porcelain, stuck in another coughing fit. One thing that certainly does not fit is the splatter of red dots on the inside of the seat, and it takes a moment for Jongdae to catch up with what is happening.

 

‘’Joonmyun?’’ He calls, voice still thick with drowsy sleepiness, ‘’Joonmyun, are you alright?’’

 

His partner does not answer. Another fit takes over Joonmyun’s body, more and more blood being coughed up, and Jongdae cannot shoot fast enough to his lover’s side, one hand on his lower back and another keeping his black hair dampened with sweat out of his face.

 

‘’Oh my God,’’ Jongdae exclaims upon seeing the splatter of blood leaving the older’s body, ‘’we have to go to the hospital now!’’

 

Upon this, Joonmyun heavily shakes his head. He is breathing heavily, chest still heaving, but the coughing seems to die down. He moves away from his lover’s touch, obviously embarrassed. It’s out of character for Joonmyun to feel shame at Jongdae seeing him like this: they’ve never been shy about anything with one another. Jongdae does not understand, and it makes him anxious.

 

‘’It’s okay,’’ Joonmyun assures him, ‘’it’s happened before. It’s nothing.’’

 

‘’What do you mean ‘it’s happened before’?!’’ The younger man exclaims, not being able to keep his voice down. The blood in the white bowl scares him greatly. Now Jongdae is no doctor, but he knows coughing up blood sure is no good business. And then with the way Joonmyun has been losing so much weight…

 

‘’I’m taking you to the hospital. Now.’’ He announces, hauling Joonmyun up from the floor by his arms. The other makes to protest.

 

‘’Jongdae – ‘’

 

‘’It wasn’t a proposal.’’ Jongdae insists. Joonmyun promptly shuts up. He can hear the fear in his partner’s voice. Truthfully, he’s known that fear as well.

 

*

 

Joonmyun has waited too long for his hospital visit. This is what the doctor tells him with a stern face as he sits on the other side of the desk, his words softly spoken and carefully chosen, and Joonmyun pretends not to fall apart. He doesn’t dare tilt his head to see Jongdae sitting beside him, scared of what he might find in those eyes.

 

*

 

Joonmyun has months to live. He is only twenty-eight, but apparently that’ll be all the time that he is given. It’s nowhere near enough to do all the things Joonmyun has ever wanted to do. He wants to climb a mountain with Jongdae, any mountain; he wants to taste authentic French croissants and he wants to visit the set of Star Wars: Episode V; he wants to play guitar in front of a crowd; he wants to learn how to paint; he’d like to visit the Bora Bora islands and swim with dolphins. Most of all, he wants to take Jongdae to Vienna.

 

Joonmyun remembers seeing movies about people like him dying. Tragic movies; bittersweet yet beautiful. Being a bit of a sentimentalist, Joonmyun always liked those movies. He thought there was something beautiful about such a melancholy thing. Now, Joonmyun realizes there is no beauty in death. There is only pain.

 

Jongdae quits his study at the university despite Joonmyun’s protests. They put the house up for sale at a ridiculously low price, hoping somebody will quickly buy it and give them enough money for another trip to the countryside; for Joonmyun to taste real truffles and wear a beautiful tailored suit like he’d always wanted to. It’s not like the movies at all. There is just stress mixed in with regret and heartache. Joonmyun is in pain all day. Physically (from his disease), and mentally (from every waking moment). It’s misery. Jongdae and Joonmyun twist around each other like the opposite poles of a magnet, constantly circling around, but never daring to touch one another.

 

‘’I want to see Vienna,’’ Joonmyun blurts out one night. He’s sat in his wheelchair (recently having become too weak to walk), his hand clutched between Jongdae’s warm ones. The other man looks at him, really looks at him, and as Joonmyun looks into his dark brown eyes filled with love, he nearly loses himself in despair.

 

‘’I want to go there,’’ he repeats, ‘’even if it’s the last thing I do – ‘’

 

He doesn’t finish the sentence. His words go flying away with the wind brushing through their hair. Then, Jongdae bursts out into tears. His sobbing isn’t quiet. There is no need to pretend here; they both know what is coming. Sometimes Joonmyun feels more sorry for Jongdae than he feels for himself. He’s the one leaving; Jongdae will be the one left behind.

 

‘’We’ll go there, I promise,’’ he creaks out between sobs, ‘’once I scrape the money together, we’ll go there. I’ll show you every place you want to go, every show you want to see… I’ll buy you coffee and cake at that place you wanted to go badly next to the Opera,’’

 

‘’We still have time,’’ Joonmyun tells him. Jongdae only cries harder.

 

‘’What am I going to do when you leave?’’ He asks. Joonmyun doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have the answer to that.

 

*

 

Joonmyun loves Jongdae. He has ever since the moment they first met in the university library ten years ago, when Joonmyun was still an awkward adolescent switching through studies haphazardly and Jongdae was a science nerd going for his physics and chemistry bachelor at the same time because his parents had told him why not. Jongdae had stood on his toes reaching up for a 200-pager on Quantum Mechanics and, having spot someone with a centimeter or two more on him, had asked Joonmyun for help. A curious struggle with height had ensued, but eventually Joonmyun was able to hand Jongdae the book. Few months later, Jongdae handed Joonmyun a beer at the university café.

 

Joonmyun quickly learned that while Jongdae enjoyed the sciences, his secret wish had always been to be a singer. And who could fault him, with a voice like that? But this was reality and Jongdae needed a job, so he chose his second passion instead. Joonmyun loved learning about Jongdae. From the way he’d shiver if you caressed the back of his neck with your fingertips to the way he’d always leave a little bit of cola left in his drink because once he’d had a fly in there to the way his laugh gets high-pitched when he finds something truly hilarious.

 

Joonmyun comes to realize that Jongdae, unlike his sweet appearance of thick black specs and woolen sweaters, likes it a little rough. He learns that the other man likes it when Joonmyun pulls on his hair that much, and that he likes it when Joonmyun tightly wraps his legs around his waist when Jongdae drives into him. Jongdae teaches him just how they can wear each other out in all the right ways, leaves him sweating and panting and only ever wanting more.

 

It’s a little different now. Joonmyun’s body is no longer the thickly muscled powerhouse it once used to be. Little is left of his thick thighs and broad chest where Jongdae liked to place teasing kisses, of his strong hands that could so easily wrap themselves around Jongdae’s wrists. Jongdae is careful with him, carrying him onto the bed like a newly-wed bride, placing Joonmyun down so softly as if he might just float away otherwise. It still feels just as good though, and when Jongdae finally connects with him, Joonmyun isn’t aware of his illness for the first time in a very long while. He feels rather than thinks and rides on the waves of his emotions, until all he can think and feel is Jongdae, next to him, beside him, surrounding him; breathing him.

 

*

 

Joonmyun dies in his sleep at 3:24 in the morning aged twenty-eight, leaving behind half a life not lived.

 

*

 

Jongdae wants to take Joonmyun to Vienna. He’s planned their trip many times in his head. The flight consists of thirteen torturous hours where Joonmyun will surely end up perched between two heavyset Austrian women (Joonmyun never has any luck in his travels) but eventually they’ll arrive. The golden city lights up before their own eyes as soon as they enter the Bruno-Keisky Platz. Jongdae takes Joonmyun to see the Stephansdom first, because he knows how much Joonmyun loves Beethoven, and he lets his lover hear the sweet notes of the orchestra on their first night there. Then there is coffee and Sachertorte at the Café Museum, because Jongdae knows how much of a sweet tooth the older man is and really Joonmyun has been needing some fattening up lately, what with all that fitness lately. Jongdae wants to take Joonmyun back to their suite in the Savoy and do some fitness of their own.

 

He imagines a rainy night with droopy grey streets through which he and Joonmyun can wander, coming across only friendly strangers who pass by with another glance, who do not care about their hands clutched together and Joonmyun’s black hair brushing Jongdae’s cheek from where his head is lying on the younger man’s shoulder. He would feel only Joonmyun’s warmth as he’d buy the other Glühwein from a fat old friendly vendor on the street, and tell him he loved him as the soprano belted out her final note at the Opera.

 

They would live, and that would be enough.

 

*

 

Jongdae goes to Vienna alone. He isn’t sure about where to go. His hotel, a cheap, run-down place – the only thing he’d managed to afford – is a flurry of people speaking a language he can’t understand. He goes to the cathedral in the old city center, but finds it closed and under construction. The opera is filled with people by the two’s, and when Jongdae spots an Asian man about Joonmyun’s height dressed in the black-and-white tie his partner loves so much, he almost breaks down in the middle of the performance. Jongdae sits in his hotel room for two days, locked away from the outside world. He weeps and doesn’t pretend to be happy because there is no one to pretend for anymore.

 

The worst part is how much Joonmyun would have loved it all. How he would have gleamed at the early twentieth century warehouse with its golden plates and stern designer clothing, the champagne and the caviar eaten by tall blonde-haired women with grey-haired men by their side, strutting in and out of their black taxis. How he could have danced along to the jolly folk music, with its uppity tunes and old-fashioned instruments that called for mountaintops and Lederhosen, how the language would have richly rolled off his tongue in that way only Joonmyun could speak.

 

He has to return to Korea in two days. Back to a life that he doesn’t even want; that doesn’t even exist anymore. Not without Joonmyun.

 

*

 

Jongdae leaves Joonmyun in Vienna. He scatters his ashes everywhere that Joonmyun might have wanted to be, places he wants to show him and places where he almost expects to find the other man to suddenly appear. The city breathes Joonmyun; his posh attitude yet friendly kindness, his beauty yet old-fashioned idea of elegance. With every step Jongdae takes, he feels alive with Joonmyun. He lets the cold wind take all that is left of Joonmyun on this world, and hides memories of him deep in his heart, brings them back home.

 

Sometimes he has vivid dreams in which Joonmyun lies besides him at the Savoy in the center of Vienna, clothed in nothing but the cream sheets and glow of happiness in his eyes, and he can practically feel the softness of his black hair as he threads his fingers through Joonmyun’s fringe. He’ll wake up with an ache in his heart but no tears in his eyes, for Jongdae managed to bring Joonmyun to Vienna at least.

 

Because Jongdae loves Joonmyun, and not even death can take that away from him.

 

*

 

 


End file.
